Film Notes: I Know Where I’m Going!

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) film notes by Tova Gannana for our Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger series, running September to November 2024 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian. Follow Tova on Instagram: @tovagannana

The series is presented by The British Film Institute, SIFF, and Greg Olson Productions. Passes and tickets available now.

Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller) begins the film I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) with a series of goodbyes. She greets her father whom she calls “Darling” at a fancy club. Her father, a bank manager, worries what his customers will think if they see him dining there. He worries when he realizes his daughter has what is classified as a “usual” drink. Her news trumps her father’s sense of propriety, she’s going to be married to a wealthy man, an industrialist, Sir Robert Berringer, the same age as her father, who lives on Kiloran, an island in the Hebrides. Joan and her father share a cocktail and a last dance.

Joan wears a leopard print hat at an angle. A leopard print purse that is big and flat like an envelope. Her father sees her off from Manchester. Her journey will have many stops. At each arrival she is greeted by a handler of Sir Robert Berringer. They see to it that she makes it to her next mode of transportation. They greet her with, “Lovely day isn’t it,” until the day turns on them with a storm, then the refrain becomes, “It’s a pity about the day.”

In the first leg it seems as if Joan’s knowing where she is going will really get her there. Joan slips into her wedding gown in her compartment and while she is dreaming the train wheels sing I know where I’m going and the train whistle answers I do. The scene is shot through a veil of plastic, like the plastic of the protective bag that houses her wedding dress.

Knowing is a belief. There are some things you can only know because you have experienced them. And then there is knowing you can do something, get somewhere, become somebody. Joan Webster was born knowing that she wanted silk stockings, that instead of waiting for a bus she could get a ride with the milkman, that being taken on a date to a fancy restaurant was more her taste than going out every night. Joan is 25 in 1945 when the movie takes place. Joan has the determination of a country that has fought and survived. Her father’s knowing is a belief in saving, in modesty, he doesn’t want his costumers to see him at a night club because he worries they’ll think he’s spending their money. His experience of living through a war would have worn him down in a way that may have built Joan up. War shapes generations differently.

Joan believes she can make her way to Kiloran though no sailor will take their boat out in the storm. One tells her, “In less than a second you can get from this life to the next.” While preoccupied with getting across to Kiloran she meets Torquil MacNeil (Robert Livesey), who is in the Navy and out on an eight day leave, “Eight days and I want to spend it there,” he says about Kiloran. Joan knows where she is going. Torquil knows what he wants. He is a stranger to her who becomes a good companion to be stranded with. There are no nightclubs on the Isle of Mull but there are celebrations and at one such Torquil translates a song in Gaelic for Joan, “You’re the maid for me,” their eyes lock and the moment becomes like the train wheels singing, something between them has been set in motion. Joan moves around while waiting to travel to Kiloran. In her movement she changes how she views where she is going. “People in modern houses don’t know what they’re missing,” Joan says as she closes her bedroom window at an inn. Her fingers had touched Torquil while they shared a match. Before she blows out her light she counts the ceiling beams and says a prayer.

On the Isle of Mull everyone has an accessory. The Colonel (C.W.R Knight), a falconer, has a hawk and a missing eagle, for him finding the eagle is like what getting to Kiloran is for Joan. Catriona Potts (Pamela Brown), a childhood friend of Torquil, has a castle and hounds. Torquil has his island Kiloran, for he is the Laird of Kiloran and Sir Robert Berringer is his tennant, a discovery Joan makes while waiting on the Isle of Mull. Language can also be an accessory. The locals speak Gaelic and it’s not just Gaelic that Joan doesn’t understand but also their attitudes. “People around here are very poor I think,” Joan tells Torquil.“They’re not poor they just haven’t got any money,” Torquil replies. The islanders want money in I Know Where I’m Going! but they don’t want it more than they want to keep the parts of themselves that really matter to them.

Joan finds a young sailor who is willing to take her money and risk their lives in an attempt to sail through the gale to Kiloran. Her voyage from Manchester to the Hebrides mirrors the boat voyage to Kiloran except that the train voyage goes smoothly but her illusions remain intact while the boat voyage is a disaster but her illusions are shattered.

While stuck on the Isle of Mull a phone conversation with her fiance awakens Joan. Sir Robert Berringer is calling her from where she can’t reach him. Does she want to follow his voice? On a bus she learns about his character from the locals. It’s not a good one, “The rich man on Kiloran, like a little king he is.” Sir Robert Berringer can buy his time but not his place. With his money and his ways he is what John Dunne wrote against, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,”

Joan stands facing the sea. A gust of wind takes her itinerary. Her plans on paper lost, she spirals. To know but to not be able to, she despairs, desperate to make the crossing, to arrive at her destination. Then what? “I know where I’m going,” she realizes before it’s too late is an idea, not a life.